Douglas rolled back the years with a man-of-the-match performance as the Dark Blues scored their first SPL goal of the season – and recorded their first top-flight win.

Douglas saved a first-half penalty from John Sutton and pulled off a string of stunning stops, but was also well served by team-mates in front who threw themselves at everything.

Smith said: “Rab was brilliant – and he produces performances like that all the time.

“He made a crucial save at the penalty that stopped Hearts pulling level and then made another couple of super stops on top of that. But it was a great team performance. All the players gave me every last ounce of effort.

“We defended so well from front to back. We put in so much effort and it was great for the players to be given their reward.

“We won’t be kidded. We know it’ll be a long, hard season and it’s only one result, albeit Tynecastle is such a difficult place to come.

“It’s good to go into the international week with a victory behind us. The players gave everything, including last-ditch tackles and headers.

“Now we need to find consistency. But if we keep performing like that we’ll give ourselves a great chance of doing well this season.”

Having conceded six goals in three previous SPL games, Smith said: “We tried to make things a bit more compact so we would be more difficult to break down. It worked well.”